Portrait of a Javanese Bodyguard

'Clothes make the man' is how the Rijksmuseum introduces this series of five Javanese court figures, painted on Java under Dutch colonial rule between about 1820 and 1870. Dress carried rank there, and the museum's own descriptions show that three of the five wear a jacket of Western or Western-inspired cut over their Javanese clothes. The bodyguard wears none. He stands bare-chested, like the regent, the highest in rank of the set, with two batik cloths wrapped around him. One is pale with large dark floral sprays, the other dark with an interlocking pattern of oval petals. A red checked cloth is tucked into the top of the wrap. A patterned headcloth, a long moustache and side whiskers frame a hard stare. Like all five, he is set against a plain ground above a tiled floor, and a Balinese kris is carried at his back.